Oregon Gunman Smiled, Then Fired, Student Says

ROSEBURG, Ore. — The gunman who killed nine people last week during a writing class here had an uncomfortable exchange with the teacher earlier in the week, one of the survivors of the shooting at Umpqua Community College said.

The survivor, Tracy Heu, a nursing student, said she had recognized the killer, Christopher Harper-Mercer, as a student who had spoken up on another day when the teacher, Lawrence Levine, asked for the definition of a vocabulary word. When Mr. Harper-Mercer offered a response, Mr. Levine “kind of corrected Chris,” Ms. Heu, 30, said in an interview at her home this week.

Mr. Levine was among the nine killed by Mr. Harper-Mercer.

Another student in the class, Lacey Scroggins, confirmed through her father, Randy Scroggins, that Mr. Harper-Mercer had engaged with the teacher and said he was a vocal member of the class, which had begun that week.

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Christopher Harper-MercerCreditvia Associated Press

Ms. Scroggins, 18, and Ms. Heu are among the few survivors from Classroom 15 in Snyder Hall who have described their experiences. On the morning of Oct. 1, Ms. Heu said, she was in a center seat in the front row of the writing class when Mr. Harper-Mercer strode into the room about 10:30, smiling and wearing black clothes and a bulletproof vest.

The gunman’s first shot was to the back of the room, Ms. Heu said — a warning shot, it seemed, before he ordered the students and teacher to get down on the floor and lie on their stomachs. They huddled in the center of the room, noses to the ground, partly hidden below rows of two-person desks.

To Ms. Heu’s right was Sarena Dawn Moore, a woman in a wheelchair who had crawled to the floor, next to her service dog. “He told her to climb back up,” Ms. Heu said. “She tried to climb back up, and he shot her. And that’s when I kind of knew: ‘Oh, my God. It’s real.’ ” There was a spray of bullets followed by a lot of blood, she said.

At one point, Mr. Harper-Mercer began asking students about their religion, though their responses did not seem to determine whether he shot them, Ms. Heu said. She recalled that he had asked two people if they were Christians; she thought that they said “yes” and that he killed them.

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President Obama was greeted by Mayor Kitty Piercy upon his arrival in Eugene, Ore., on Friday.CreditBrendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“He started pointing out, ‘Hey, you with the glasses, you with the yellow tank top, stand up,’” Ms. Heu said. “And when he did all that, he started asking, ‘What is your religion, do you believe in — are you a Christian?’”

“And that person would say, ‘Yeah,’ ” she continued. “He said: ‘Good. I’m going to send you to God. You’re going to see God.’ And then he’d just start shooting them.”

“I don’t think Christianity or religion had to do anything with him killing people,” Ms. Heu added. “If it really did have something to do with it, when he came in, first he would have asked every single body to say what their religion was before he started shooting them.”

The gunman never approached Ms. Heu. Lying face down in the front of the huddle, the blood of fellow students pooled beneath her, she said, she thought she appeared to be dead. “The only thing I could think of was: Just be calm,” she said. “Try not to make your chest go up and down so high. Because he’s going to realize that you’re still alive and he’s going to make you stand up. And you stand up — that’s it.”

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Some residents lined up in front of the airport in Roseburg, Ore., to protest President Obama’s visit to the town on Friday. Others had signs proclaiming, “Welcome Obama.”CreditSteve Dykes/Getty Images

Had the gunman asked, Ms. Heu would have told him that she is not a Christian. Her family practices Hmong shamanism.

At some point, the gunman handed a package to 18-year-old Matthew Downing and instructed him to deliver it to the police.

For reasons that remain unclear, the gunman exited the classroom. When the police arrived at 10:44 a.m., Mr. Harper-Mercer stood in the doorway of the building, then moved outside, firing at two officers. Detective Sgt. Joe Kaney and Detective Todd Spingath of the Roseburg police had arrived without bulletproof vests; they fired three rounds. One lodged in the gunman’s side, the police said.

Mr. Harper-Mercer, 26, then returned to the classroom, where he fatally shot himself. Mr. Downing, the student entrusted with the envelope, shouted for a student to kick the weapon — or weapons — away from the gunman’s hand. The police later recovered six guns and copious ammunition from the school.

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Valerie Vititow on Sunday near a makeshift memorial to the victims of last week's shooting in Roseburg.CreditJohn Locher/Associated Press

Ms. Heu sprinted out of the room. She entered a men’s bathroom, she said, but was repelled by what she saw there: a long gun on the ground in the stall for the disabled, and a bag with its zipper open. She ran out of the building; Mr. Downing followed.

“They pointed the gun at Matthew,” Ms. Heu said of police officers who had just arrived. “They didn’t know. He was waving the envelope he had on him. I was like, ‘He’s fine. He’s a student. The shooter told him to give that to you guys.’ ”

At Mr. Downing’s home, his mother said he was too traumatized to talk about what happened. “My son is not a hero,” Summer Smith said, adding that he was just trying to survive.

Outside, Ms. Heu embraced Mr. Downing and another classmate, and climbed into an ambulance. At Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, she was shocked to learn that she had been shot in her right hand. After surgery, she went home, kissed her three children and took a shower, sobbing as her husband scrubbed blood from her tangled black hair.

After hearing accounts of the day, Ms. Heu still does not have any idea what Mr. Harper-Mercer’s motive was. “I would ask him: Why? Why he did what he did,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Oregon Gunman Smiled, Then Fired, Student Says . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe